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Unable to Play Watch Later YouTube videos on Plex Web

There is an issue with Plex Web for Chrome playing YouTube Watch Later videos. They just sit there loading forever.

There was an issue with PMS for Windows v1.5.2 being unable to transcode YouTube videos, but that issue has been resolved in PMS for Windows v1.5.6 and later. I know this issues is resolved because the Plex app for Roku must trancode some YouTube Watch Later videos and they play and transcode fine on the Plex app for Roku using PMS for Windows v1.5.6 or later.

The same YouTube Watch Later videos will direct play on the iOS app and transcode on the Roku app. But I have tried playing these YouTube videos in Plex Web v3.2.1, v3.4.1, and v3.6 in Chrome and they just sit there loading forever.

I even tried disabling Direct Play under Settings > Plex Web > Player, but they still will not play.

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Comments

I have also tried the latest version of the Plex Web app (v3.6) on Firefox and Safari from another device (including disabling direct play) and YouTube Watch Later video playback fails on those browsers as well.

EDIT:

I have also tried the latest version of the Plex Web app (v3.6) on browsers from Ipad (Safari and Firefox) and YouTube Watch Later video playback fails as well. But Firefox on Windows 10 can play YouTube Watch Later videos.

@shopgirl284 said:
There is an issue with Plex Web for Chrome playing YouTube Watch Later videos. They just sit there loading forever.

There was an issue with PMS for Windows v1.5.2 being unable to transcode YouTube videos, but that issue has been resolved in PMS for Windows v1.5.6 and later. I know this issues is resolved because the Plex app for Roku must trancode some YouTube Watch Later videos and they play and transcode fine on the Plex app for Roku using PMS for Windows v1.5.6 or later.

The same YouTube Watch Later videos will direct play on the iOS app and transcode on the Roku app. But I have tried playing these YouTube videos in Plex Web v3.2.1, v3.4.1, and v3.6 in Chrome and they just sit there loading forever.

I even tried disabling Direct Play under Settings > Plex Web > Player, but they still will not play.

I am getting the same issue with Watch later not working in Chrome. I have tried IE and that works but not Chrome. So far I have tested the following:

Chrome (Doesn't work)

Internet Explorer (Works)

Plex Windows App (Works)

Android (Works)

iOS (Works)

Not sure where the issue is with Chrome but it is for sure the browser that won't play the videos in the Watch Later playlist.

Question

Does anyone know if there is a way to send an email to Plex and have their development team take a look at the issue? I know it is a small thing but it would be nice to have this working.

The problem is the Accept-Encoding HTTP header that Chrome sends to PMS, when it requests the HTML required to play a YouTube video.
The fix should be simple from there, for a Plex developer.

For end-users who can't wait for Plex to fix this issue, you can install a Chrome extension that allows you to modify the HTTP headers sent to servers, and force the Accept-Encoding header to always send the value gzip, deflate

Thanks @gboudreau for fixing a deal breaker. I wonder why plex employees couldn't address this sooner? There were tons of complaints on it. Hopefully the update with the fix doesn't take till Christmas as I'm sure there many out there who don't know about the chrome extension workaround.

Howdy, Stranger!

When logs (server or client app) are requested for an investigation, please do NOT turn on "verbose" logging unless it is explicitly requested. Verbose logging makes things much more difficult in the majority of cases.